


Tell Me About Your Past

by closedcartridge



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Bipolar!Diego, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Mental Instability, OCD!Klaus, Panic Attacks, Post-Season/Series 01, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Therapy, therapy sessions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 21:47:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18374711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/closedcartridge/pseuds/closedcartridge
Summary: “Dad was a dick. A real nasty piece of work. Hated my guts from the start. Hated Vanya’s too. And the others,” Klaus laughed. He couldn’t remember a lot of things, but he could remember him. Sods law. “A dick, but a smart as hell. Knew how to work us against each other when we were getting too close.”-A look at each of the Hargreeves in their individual therapy sessions, set in a world where Vanya missed the world, and the apocalypse was averted. Generally looking in to how each of them feels now that the threats are gone and they have a chance to move on.





	1. Luther

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! So this is sort of a character study type thing, looking into how each of the characters is feeling after the apocalypse. There's some discussion of specific mental illnesses (more obvious in some than others) but it's left largely up to interpretation.  
> Nothing in this fic is particularly graphic, but if you're sensitive to certain things please check the warnings at the start of each chapter.  
> This was very therapeutic to write as a whole! Referenced largely from some of my own sessions.
> 
> They're in number order so you can always skip to your favourite Hargreeves if that's more your thing!
> 
> Last call for trigger warnings (generally): Discussions of canon-typical child abuse, talks of PTSD, talks of medication, talks about mental instability
> 
> Trigger Warnings for Luther's part: Mentioned attempted suicide, self-destructive behaviour

“Dad knew what was best for me, he always did. I was sent away because I underperformed, not because he hated me.”

*

Luther couldn’t understand why they had asked him – forced him – to come to speak to someone about his father. He had argued with his doctor about it, stomped his foot and kicked up a fuss, but in the end he had lost the fight when he had realised he was basically throwing a temper tantrum over speaking to a therapist. 

If he just attended one session, they would figure out that there was nothing wrong with him. Sure he was a little rough around the edges, but wasn’t everyone? 

What Luther resented most of all was being forced to see the same therapist as the rest of his family. Whatever he tried to say in his sessions would just be tainted by whatever else they said about their dad, and if he wasn’t careful they’d just call him a liar. Ask him why he was sticking up for their dad because the others were making him look like some kind of monster.

So now he sat in the office, hunched over with body too big for the tiny armchair they had provided, he remained indignant.

“I know what you’ve heard about my father, but you have to know that he wasn’t a bad person. He didn’t raise us like normal kids, but we _weren’t_ normal kids, so it’s to be expected. We were special. He never did anything that wasn’t for our own good, or that we didn’t deserve, and he never laid a finger on me.” Was his opening line, practised and poised.

The doctor had watched him, and he suddenly found that his shoes were much more interesting. He could never stand people who stared.

“You know that physical harm isn’t the only type of harm, Luther.”

From week one, Luther hated it. Vanya had already spilled the family secrets, twisted them in her hands until they looked ugly and rotten and then spread them to anyone who would listen. It wasn’t his fault if his sister couldn’t handle being Number Seven.

Of course, he cared about his siblings. He would walk to the ends of the Earth for them, if it was something that their dad would agree with, but that didn’t change the fact that he was Number One. Built to lead, to be in charge, and the others were supposed to follow. Luther was sure that he could keep dodging questions until the therapist figured out that he was _fine,_ they were all fine. Sure they might have some issues but it wasn’t the fault of their father.

But he couldn’t understand why his skin crawled every time she reminded him that his father never gave him a name.

 _‘Everything my dad did, he did for a reason.’_  
He had a catchphrase now, the same line that was parroted out any time that therapist tried to scratch any deeper than the surface. 

When he thought about, he wasn’t sure that this wasn’t all just one big test. Maybe dad had sent someone in to test him, to make sure that he was still loyal. It would explain why it looked like none of his post from the moon was open; he was just making sure that he was still on his side after the whole transformation thing. But dad was dead. Which meant that what was happening was more nefarious, that someone was going out of their way to try and get information on Reginald out of him. He would make sure no one got to their secrets.

When she had caught him searching her office for wire taps and video cameras, Mrs Harrison had ordered him an increased prescription for some drug that he hadn’t even been taking in the first place. He had just nodded, and helped pin up the lie by talking about how bad they tasted. 

But his sessions felt like someone was trying to pry their way into his mind, trying to take secrets from out of his head to use them against him.

No one needed to know whether or not he had clouds of paranoia clogging up the back of his head, or how many painkillers a man with superhuman strength could metabolise before he started to feel ill. The word superhuman made him laugh now.

He was barely human any more. But sometimes he looked at his siblings and wondered if they were any more human than he was in the long run.

“You’ve been fighting with your brother again, haven’t you?”

Luther ignored her and just bounced his leg against the linoleum floor. It was off-cream, like something that had been left out overnight for too long.

“Admitting that you’re hurting is making progress, Luther, you should be proud of yourself.”

The praise stirred up a ripple of contentedness in his stomach, and he forced it back down. Klaus had been wrong about Reginald, he wasn’t playing tennis with Hitler. He was playing tennis with this bloody therapist and Luther was the ball. Admitting that he resented his father for abandoning him on the moon had given him a sharp slap, sending him across to the other end of the field with a swing of Reginald’s disappointment, welcomed into the warmth of praise on the other side from his therapist. 

“Speaking out against my dad is nothing to be proud of.” He caught the snarl in his voice himself, and felt the returning backhand of Mrs Harrison as she shoved him across the field back into his father’s embrace.

Luther preferred that. Reginald’s approval had never been coddling, never been warm, but it had been familiar, and not overly doting. The therapist’s words always felt cruel and fake, lathered so thick with sympathy that they were easy to swallow. What was that film, the one with the song about a _spoonful of sugar?_ Her comfort was just a ruse, something to help him slip into complacency and acceptance. 

_Jesus,_ he was starting to sound like Klaus’ conspiracy theories. 

They watched each other in silence again. Or, the therapist watched Luther, and Luther continued to count the cavities in the floor where damage had taken its toll. It was funny, how everything reminded him of the moon these days. Tiny craters in an off-white floor that he wished he could disappear into. For the first time, he found himself missing the loneliness.

“Can I ask you a question?”

Luther lost his place in his daydream, gravity returning to its normal level and clamping him back down in his chair. Had it always felt this oppressive? Things were always so much heavier than he remembered.

A moment of silence, deliberation. 

“Yeah.” 

He had always been one to follow the orders of whichever way the power axis tilted. Before it had always been Reginald, his power enough to keep him and his siblings always tilted to the bottom. When he had died, it had thrown them all too far off balance for Luther to take his place, and now Mrs Harrison was pushing him back down the seesaw again. Obeying, it turned out, came relatively easy.

“Have you spoken to your siblings about any of this? They’ve been through a lot of the same things that you have.”

“Of course I haven’t.” 

A little green notebook floated through Luther’s memories, the one that he had been asked to keep. The one that he had thrown in the fire in frustration. Given for journaling the decisions that he made, and how he perceived himself – what was _really_ him and what was just what Reginald had told him.

The lines had gotten too blurry for him, and he had thrown it into the flames like it was poison, “They were never Number One. It was different for me.”

He used to sit on the floor opposite Reginald as he picked his siblings apart, disassembling them piece by piece, until he finally got round to taking him apart too. Once he had actually smiled at him when he promised he’d work on improving himself. But he was never quite good enough for his dad, was he?

_Back into Mrs Harrison’s court._

“No, but it might help you get perspective on this. Or, talking to them might help you keep your mind off of him. You keep thinking about him, right? What he’d think of you now.”

Silence again, but this time the moon in the floor creeped him out, the way its uneven, imperfect surface seemed to watch him back. Her tone wasn’t sappy and overly sympathetic, and Luther had to thank her for that. She was reasonable, with a matter-of-fact demeanour about her, and despite his best efforts, it made Luther like her. Trust her. A lot better than he did their other doctor, the one who had tried to drown him in a tidal wave of sympathy of emotion; before he put his fist through the wall of his office.

“It doesn’t matter what I do,” He admitted, and the words are sticky like tar against his teeth; “He’s always there. Like he keeps watching me, in my sleep, and the nodes are still monitoring what I do.”

She nodded, but didn’t respond, imploring him to continue.

“He’d be so disappointed in me. After all the training he put me through, I couldn’t even lead well enough to stop the apocalypse properly.”

“You did what you thought was best.” It wasn’t a question; it was a statement of fact. Luther had done what he was sure Reginald would have done if he was there, the old man puppeteering his thoughts and actions. For a moment he had been his hideous, perfect Number One. And he had been his sister’s worst nightmare, too. 

“I wasn’t good enough to stop the apocalypse alone, or to protect them.”

“Who decided that it was your responsibility to do that?”

A spark of anger shot off inside of Luther’s head, resentment of his father, of his therapist, of his siblings, of himself. Resentment was a match and if he let it burn through enough of the bitterness, he’d just be left with the guilt that was hidden underneath.  
“It’s my duty, as Number One,” _a failed number one, your dad made you do this, you didn’t have a choice-_ Reginald’s hand was on his shoulder, reassuring him as he spoke, “But it was too much. I couldn’t do it alone,” _you weren’t alone but you pushed away the only ones who could help you_ – Reginald’s grip tightened. “I don’t know how to deal with what dad expected of me.”

Reginald was choking him, thin, bony hands wrapped around his throat in a hold that he couldn’t will his body to escape from, even as his vision started to swim. 

He squeezed his eyes shut. The grip around his throat loosened again. Luther had to will himself to remember how breathing was supposed to work. In, then out, then in again, even if it was robotic, and even if he couldn’t fight the fact he was still sinking. He forced himself to carry on, to gain some distance between himself and the old man.

“Vanya probably hates me. Allison too. I don’t know about the others.” It was hard for him to talk about his siblings, and sometimes it felt like he was talking about strangers, rather than the people he had grown up with. 

“You’ve still not tried to speak to them since you arrived here?”

“No. How could I?”

Reginald was still stood over his therapist’s shoulder.


	2. Diego

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warnings for Diego's Chapter: Self harm mention, character death mention

"I don't need to be here. I'm fucking fine; I'm just trying to get on with my life.” 

\- 

Diego had been so confident when he had his first appointment, but now being in that room felt both like being relieved and like being observed, a rat in a cage. He understood that sometimes you have to push down hard to get the feeling out of your system, red and thick.

“You know I’m fine, Denise.” He liked his therapist, or tried to. First name basis; at least in part because it might get him out of the session earlier, but also because he couldn’t blame her for doing her job. He didn’t want to be there, but that didn’t mean he was going to take it out on her. She reminded him of Grace, if Grace had watched him, trying to read between the lines of the memories he was prepared to give away.

Sometimes he wondered whether or not she was sick of his family yet. After all, the Hargreeves were the _problem_ family, and treating all six of them must take its toll after a while. He often wondered how the hell she continued to deal with them, so he tried to be nice to her. It was difficult though, when she kept gently aggravating wounds that Diego would rather forget about.

She watched him, eyes moving pointedly towards his arm. Diego shifted to tug his sleeve down a little, as if she couldn’t already see through the long sleeves and bandages he had been careful to hide his weakness under. 

Her silence prompted more speaking on his part, more speaking than he wanted to give, but if it meant he could leave quicker, he’d try.

“Working with knives is dangerous, sometimes accidents happen.” Rows of neat little accidents, none of them quite deep enough to be anything serious. Careful, steady handed accidents.

They had spoken about the fact he never felt in control before. It had taken a significant amount of prying on Denise’s behalf, and the whole experience had been like pulling teeth, but he had finally cracked and admitted that most of the time he felt like he was on the verge of falling, toppling over the edge and plummeting to the ground. His knives were the one thing that he _could_ control; practised hands against metal against skin. Against the one part of him that no one else could attempt to control. It kept him balanced.

“Have you been taking your medication, Diego?”

“Yes,” he lied, because even if he didn’t want to be here, he wanted not-Grace to get off his back and let him go. Yes, his dad was a monster, he was messed up, his sister killed his mother, and his best friend was dead. _Big deal,_ he could cope with it by himself.

Most days he felt invincible, threw himself into training and fights, indestructible against the regular schedule of the world, sleep be damned. His doctor described this as mania. _He_ described this as making the most of the skills that he had. Because just for a while he was in control, doing what he was _supposed_ to be doing. And he was supposed to be flying by the sun. When he lost Eudora, he hadn’t slept for three days. But he had tried to get justice for her, so he had spent those hours well. He had chased after her killers in an ice cream van with his brother – his brother who couldn’t even drive – and hit the bastards who were responsible.

In hindsight, telling Denise the truth about that might have been his first mistake. Sometimes he felt that she could see straight through him to what he was doing when he was at home; watching him rifle through his possessions at 4am trying to find evidence that he was still himself.

That side of his existence was scary, but it was comfortable. It was familiar and comforting to throw himself into training, consequences to his body be damned. But when he flew too close to the sun and started to burn up, there was nothing left for him to catch himself on. Hitting the ground always hurt the most, and every time he couldn’t force himself out of bed he could feel his father shouting at him about slacking. 

Denise was watching him; picking apart his lies and they both knew it, but she didn’t say anything.

“Do you want to talk about your father this week?”

There it was. The elephant in the room that he was trying very hard to keep at the door every single week. He didn’t get why they wouldn’t just let him move on and forget about him. 

“What’s there left to say? Unless you’re planning on digging him back up, he’s not a problem in my life anymore.” He definitely wasn’t leaving early today.

Denise watched him for a minute, deliberating over him, and it made Diego squirm. He hated being under her spotlight, knowing she was finding her way to work her way under his skin and open up wounds he’d done his best to hide.

“We can’t just sit at each other in silence. What about your mother, or your siblings?”

“Mom is gone.”

“Yes, but she was your main figure growing up. You must have loved her very much. Losing her must have been incredibly difficult for you.” 

Each week would be a cycle of this, she would lead him to the edge of the water, giving him the chance to stare at his reflection for a bit, and then she’d force his head under. Sooner or later he’d have to learn to breathe underwater, but for now all he could do was thrash and struggle to escape her grasp. He didn’t want to go deeper.

Talking about Grace made him want to run away, run and keep running until he could hide inside of his own memories. When she asked about Patch, it was like she had punched him in the stomach, forcing him to breathe in gasps of sick, salty water.

Drowning was basically just falling. Either way you lose your breath. 

“I don’t want to talk about her.”

Suddenly staring at the palms of his own hands seemed much more engaging than the eyes of a therapist who barely knew what was really happening did. He knew he was kidding himself by sitting here, there was nothing that she could tell him that would change the person that he had been reared and beaten into being. Reginald was dead, and the only way that he was going to get rid of his influence was packaging him and blowing the damn thing up. Confronting it meant nothing if you could just walk away. Whenever he tried, the teeth of the past kept themselves clamped in him, and he’d have to tear and fight just to get himself free.

Diego had been twenty-nine years old when he learnt what a panic attack was called, but just eight years old the first time that he had seen one. In his house they didn’t get a name. Growing up they were symbols of weakness, and that was something that was to be hidden, or punished. They were just something that happened behind closed doors, or after you had sprinted to the bathroom to hide it, but not something that you were expected to acknowledge.

When his therapist had taught him to breathe properly in time with it, to bring himself down, she had told him to go mentally to a place where he felt safe. He didn’t know how to tell her that he had no idea where a safe place would be. The safest he had ever felt was in Patch’s arms, but even she was gone now. That memory wasn’t safe any more; every time he tried to focus on it blood started to seep onto his clothes, and he was falling back through the air again.

So he had found something to ground himself instead, the smooth plastic of his domino mask. The one thing he had carried with him for years and the one thing that seemed to solidify who he _really_ was. Even when he tried to push his number away from him, tried to become _Diego,_ not Number Two, as his mom had always allowed him to be, the mask stayed with him. The way it curved gently in his hands, fitting perfectly to his face, reminded him that he was worth something.

(something sickening)

Not that this helped his therapist believe that he didn’t care about Reginald any more, but it did help keep him in one place, and she couldn’t complain about that. 

“I think it’s time for us to talk about _something._ Avoiding talking about the topic because you think it’ll make you look weak isn’t going to help you recover.” 

Diego folded his arms. Set his jaw. Met her eyes with a firm glare that only barely distorted the discomfort that was hiding behind them.

His mouth betrayed him before he realised the words were leaking out of him, like blood from a wrist, “I’m tired of the way they look at me. The doctors, I mean. Like I’m fragile, and like at any minute I’m going to collapse if they put too much pressure on me.”

The smirk he pulled was almost cruel, but the cruelty was directed at himself, “At least my siblings never thought I was weak. I miss the pressure of being forced to do something. No one here wants me to feel _real,_ they just want me to look normal.”

That was a lie, and he knew it. Even if he tried to deny it, tried to spit out every pill, he knew that they were just trying to help him cope, to help him be healthy. But _healthy_ and _mentally sound_ were so very, very far away from anything that he’d ever come across before, and he dug his heels into the ground to resist the change. Fear of the unknown.

“H-how am I supposed to a-a-”the word was jammed in his mouth, and Diego cursed himself for it, trying to spit it out like venom. When he managed to picture the phrase in his head, his words blurred together for the sake of getting them out fast enough, “How am I supposed to act normal when I was raised as just another one of my dad’s toys? He taught me to fight, and if I _don’t_ fight then I lose people, and I’ve already lost too much already, and I – and I-”

His voice sounded thin, pathetic, and he hated it.

Blinking, he forced back down whatever bile was threatening to rise up through his throat and admit that he had a weakness. 

He forced it back down with years of practise. Laced his fingers together to stop them shaking, tucked them around his knee. It hurt his wrist. Which was a good thing, gave him something else to focus on. The panic and anger that had swollen in his chest was starting to break down now, dragging the energy out of him. He wasn’t going to give Denise the chance to analyse him. She opened her mouth to tell him something, and he cut her off.

“I think our time is up for this week.”

The therapist watched as he pushed himself to his feet, and Diego briefly wondered whether or not she feet disappointed in him. Whether he’s considered _wasted potential._ Maybe it was time to let himself be.


	3. Allison

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warnings for Allison's Chapter: Injury mention (not particularly graphic but still there)

“He wasn’t the best dad in the world, but we weren’t unhappy.”

“Remember I’m not an interviewer, Allison. You don’t have to sugar coat your life to make it go down easier. I’m here to help you.”

-

From the very start, Allison had figured out that the easiest, quickest way to get through this was by playing along with their little game. That was fine. She could do that, even if she didn’t enjoy it. Talk about her life for a bit – it wasn’t like much of it was private any more – and then leave.

In all honesty, she was too tired to argue any more. And besides, every session that went well put her one step closer to Claire, which was all that mattered at the moment. So she would talk, journal her thoughts, take her meds one by one without arguing about it. If she didn’t feel like she was being monitored for signs that she needed to be kept there longer, she might have been making more progress. But she had found it easy enough to talk over time.

Allison talked in metaphors. Pretty little poetic things that made the truth look less exposed, made her feel less vulnerable. She was sure that her therapist must be sick of trying to navigate through them, but it was the only way she could force the words to leave her mouth. She was still unpicking her own web of deception, untangling what was _really_ her from what was a fabrication, but talking through it was actually helping. The change felt good. So it was better for her to comply, talk about what she could bring herself to.

Complying got her out of there. That was how it worked, wasn’t it? If someone took you in for torture you had to comply, tell them what they needed, and then they let you go. 

Not for the first time, Allison had to remind herself that she allowed herself to be here, and now wanted to be here. But if this wasn’t torture, why did it feel like her emotions being plied from her body like teeth?

 

“I’ve not been sleeping again.” Admitting it felt like she was admitting to a sin, but she pushed herself forward through the discomfort, “I’m tired and I want to get better. All I want to do is to see Claire, then my siblings.”

The therapist looked at her, dark eyes reading her. Figuring her out, “Nightmares. Do you want to talk through them like we usually do?”

Allison’s mind danced around the topic. Her nightmares these days were filled with blood and breathlessness; warm crimson against a cold floor and the screams of her sister. But the night disturbances had started years before then. She wasn’t fully sure when they had began in the first place, but now they were physical, like something pushing on her, forcing her back to being a little girl huddled alone in her room.

Whenever she stopped focusing on moving forward for too long, she ended up back there in her head, the walls closing in on her and forcing the air from her lungs. Where she couldn’t scream. Each breath she took would force more oxygen out. 

“They’re the same as usual. She’s there, on the other side of the mirror, but I can’t get to her. When I try to smash the mirror, the shards start to rain like glass. I can’t breathe,” Allison wondered whether or not Denise could see the guilt staining her hands. With all the things she told her, it must be obvious.

Silence hung in the air, and the tension made a phantom pain in her neck sing. She’s still relearning how to speak, and it feels like she’s taking her first steps again. Whenever she finds her voice again, the words never seem to come out right. They’re an obligation, to get to Claire, but not something that she finds comfort in. Some days she wished that she could stop talking forever. 

“What did you do when you woke up?”

“I… Called my sister.”

Denise watched her; her stare felt analytical, and Allison was sure that she could smell the guilt rising hot off of her skin. The sound of her pen scratching against paper made her squirm.

“She didn’t pick up. She doesn’t pick up any more. I mean, I guess I have no idea whether or not she used to pick up before either. I was never there for her.”

She couldn’t tell whether or not the lump in her throat was from talking too much at once, or if it was the hot pain that preceded tears. 

Forcing it down, she forced herself to remember what she had learnt. The way the first few sessions had been hell. Having a label and an explanation for what was causing her problems didn’t help her. It had made it worse. Acknowledging something was wrong had torn her open again. Hands over her throat, body against the floor. Brothers standing over her screaming and darkness fading _in, in, in_ again.

Two counts of PTSD. The diagnosis had seemed to bounce around her head, rolling over the seams of her body. Deeper, older scars had been reopened with new ones, and it was hard for her to work with that. There was only so much blood that she could spit out before she started to choke. She knew her siblings had a similar diagnosis. She didn’t want to talk to them about it. Most of the time she was half convinced she was faking it. That was what she did, wasn’t it? Made things up to get her way. 

A thousand eyes watching her, but only one set mattered. Her father, standing over her shoulder, shoving her because she’s a _faker, a liar, a useless, ungrateful brat._ Reginald had made her and her siblings, crafting them into who they were today. He had given them everything and nothing, and she _hated_ him for it. In her head she shoved him, kicked him, tried to force him back into the corners of her mind, but when she blinked, his figure turned out to actually be Vanya, and by that point it was too late for her to apologise.

No, she couldn’t talk about it with her brothers, and she wouldn’t talk about it with Vanya.

“How did it make you feel that she didn’t pick up?” 

She wondered whether or not the others were taking their medication. Probably not, she figured, but pushed that aside. If she wanted to get out of here, she’d have to keep taking hers. And if she wanted to be of any use to them, she’d have to focus on her own recovery, “I knew she wouldn’t. And I don’t know what I’d have done if she did pick up the phone.”

The Vanya in her head with bright white eyes smiled at her, and in her eyes she had seen understanding. Forgiveness. But that Vanya had been betrayed by the rest of her family, and Allison had almost shot her. Guilt poured through the cracks again.

“I’ve rehearsed what I’m going to say when I get the chance. But the words never seem to come out right.”

Last session they had drafted letters together, and once the ink had started to flow it had been hard for Allison to make it stop. The ink flowed thick, but when she let the pen roll across the page her writing had quickly become feverish, trying to purge the words from her body before they clogged up too fast. Anger, regret, sorrow, every little emotion that she had been taught to keep sealed tight in her head growing up.

In the end, the letters had barely been legible. She went home and burnt them with a lighter so that the ghosts of her past couldn’t read them over her shoulder whilst she wasn’t paying attention. If her lifestyle had taught her one thing, it was to make sure that you didn’t leave anything that could be used against you out on display. But writing them had thrust control back into her hands, and had opened up her ability to forgive herself. Even if it was only a little bit. She had lain in the ashes of her writing and closed her eyes, rebuilding the academy in her mind, restoring it to a time where none of them really understood how to hurt. Vague flashes of walking back with their arms around each other after having eaten way too much at the donut store, the dark moonlight casting a silver-white glow over them as they returned home passed through her mind.

When she closed her eyes like that, the image would fight, trying to twist and distort into an image of Luther and Klaus helping an injured Diego home. Pogo crucified up against the wall, the last part of their home falling apart. Five bloody and unconscious on his bed. Her brothers arguing with each other as she faded in and out of consciousness with the bumps in the road. _Ben._ Her family, broken and bleeding, torn apart at the hands of their own father. But she had taught herself to force the image of happiness back into her head. The only time in her memories where her head was free of the fuzziness of her own web of rumours and guilt and deception.

Sometimes Mrs Harrison’s voice was horrible, grating against Allison’s patience. _(Wasn’t that always the way with the voice of reason?)_

It was mostly when she was missing Claire. _(“Have you been taking your medication, Allison?”)_

She just wanted to snap at her and tell her to let her see her daughter, or let her go. _(Of course she had been taking her medication. She was well behaved, more so than her siblings. “Are we not done with treatment yet?”)_

It would be so easy to rumour her way through procedures to get back to the people who mattered. 

_(‘That’s a part of your sickness, Allison,’ a cruel voice in the back of her head purred at her, ‘You are your sickness, it’s always been there, wired into your brain.’)_

But that was a just step in recovery. Trying to remember what was and wasn’t her fault. It was like a game, trying to navigate who she was underneath the celebrity persona, but the consequences of losing the game were too much for her to handle.

Mrs Harrison asked her something she didn’t quite hear, and when Allison responded she was robotic, in a trance. The mask had slipped back into place, smiling and confident. It was easy to slip it in place over intrusive thoughts and memories she’d much rather forget. People didn’t tend to look further than skin deep, and that suited her just fine.

There wasn’t a home for her to return to, nowhere for her to start rebuilding herself. She was always overly polite with her doctors, and even with her therapist. Because if she didn’t stay engaged, their faces swam and became Reginald Hargreeves. Everyone became Reginald when she wasn’t paying enough attention. She would bite down her angry remarks and hold back anger when they accused her of not being a good enough mother, or sister, or friend.

Sometimes she wanted to take her own hand and remind herself that they weren’t accusations. That they were just people trying to guide her to somewhere healthy. But she couldn’t drag herself out from under the rubble of her childhood home, and the remarks came regardless. When her first therapist had just taken the biting sarcasm, she had demanded to switch. She couldn’t sit across from someone who reminded her so much of Vanya and tell them her problems. That was when they had put her on the same therapy scheme as her siblings.

She wasn’t sure if that was better or worse.

Her therapist seemed to have clocked on to the fact that Allison had defaulted back to her generic answers. She wondered if she could hear the tone in her voice, like she was talking to an interviewer, or if she was just that good at reading people. 

Allison didn’t particularly care. 

They went through the routine that Allison was familiar with by now; the routine for when Allison sank back into being a celebrity again, rather than a person, ready to be made to smile and pose and talk. Mrs Harrison would ask a question, perhaps about her siblings, and Allison would smile and tell her that _she was sure they were fine, but they’ve not been in a lot of contact recently, or that yes, my nightmares are still there, but I’m good at coping with them now._ Layers of false positivity slathered over each other, honey around bitter cyanide, because if she couldn’t make real progress, she would settle for the illusion. When didn’t she?

“I think we should call the session for this week.”

Thank god. She was tired of being under the microscope for this week.

“Have a good weekend, Denise. Thank you again.” 

Allison doesn’t know what she’s thanking her for. She never leaves the office feeling better. Only like she knows how to make herself _look_ better, how to slide the mask perfectly back into place in the way she had adapted to over so many years.

But the mask would never stretch quite low enough to cover the thin white scar cutting her words open before they could form.


	4. Klaus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warnings for Klaus' Chapter: Canon-typical drug references, suicidal ideation, compulsions

“Dad was a dick. A real nasty piece of work. Hated my guts from the start. Hated Vanya’s too. And the others,” Klaus laughed. He couldn’t remember a lot of things, but he could remember him. Sods law. “A dick, but a smart as hell. Knew how to work us against each other when we were getting too close.” 

-

Klaus was good at playing along, at filling the shoes that he was expected to fill. Throwing himself down into the chair in the therapist’s office and grinning before he waited for her to pick him apart, letting himself unravel in her hands until he was a mess, whether he wanted to or not. Then she’d leave him alone with his own thoughts and force him to figure out how to put himself back together again. The only reason he was so good at playing this role is because no one expected much of him anyway, which suited him. It was easy to play the role of the mindless junkie.

He still wasn’t sure that his therapist believed him. It was part of the reason why he hadn’t been taking his medication. No one ever believed him. It was probably the wrong dosage. That and he couldn’t bring himself to put the drugs back in his body again. It felt like a betrayal. _A rose by any other name,_ right? A bad pill was just a good pill without regulation. So he refused to touch either of them. It was all or nothing, and nothing kept Ben around.

After all this time, he sort of felt like he owed Ben a debt. He had talked him back down from the point of no return more times than he could count; brought him back to the surface and forced water from his lungs until he learnt how to breathe on his own again. Metaphorically, of course, but Klaus wasn’t sure he knew how to live without him any more. He was his life support. For a long time he had thought it was the drugs keeping him breathing, but it had always been Ben.

Sometimes Ben stayed with him during his sessions. Klaus often wished he didn’t, because showing that he was still so wounded hurt. Even if it was obvious - and it had always been obvious - _saying_ it put it through a whole new perspective. A new vulnerability that he wasn’t ready for. But he knew he needed him, the one brother who knew what it felt like. They cried together a lot these days. Memories hurt. 

There was guilt they shared, and guilt neither of them wanted to talk about, but Klaus was trying to force it out into the open. He had spent enough time running away from the past.

“I want to relapse.”

There was none of his usual playful snark in his voice. None of the typical defiant charm that curled his words and either got people wrapped around his finger or made them hate him. He was almost too tired to be playing word games.

He tapped his index finger twice against his leg. The word reminded him of Diego, and he forced down the image that accompanied it.

“Is there anything in particular that’s been triggering these thoughts?”

Klaus studied the tattoos on his hands, letting his fingers gently run over the text. Four taps. Then another four. 

“It’s not gotten easier, even now.” Four more taps. 

Even without the drugs he still felt like he was drowning all the time. The voices never stopped. It didn’t seem to matter what technique he was walked through, he couldn’t pick apart what was real and what was just another flashback. It didn’t particularly matter; they were just as bad either way.

“Guess this is daddy’s fault too, huh?” A joke to diffuse the tension, as always. It was just easier that way. He had shoes to fill, but it felt like he was forcing water out of his lungs.

Denise didn’t say anything, and Klaus felt the waver in his voice, “Would it kill me to stop thinking from time to time? The drugs don’t shut them up but it’s like dimming them down to an annoying buzz.”

The look Ben gave him hurt a little, his eyes sceptical but forgiving. He understood. 

“What have you been thinking about?”

_(Drowning)_

“Not that much,” _(liar,_ a voice screamed), “But also everything. I can’t remember the last time I felt clean.” Making eye contact became laborious, so he stopped. 

“What is it that’s making you feel unclean?”

Klaus felt a pang of annoyance. What _wasn’t_ making him feel unclean? It’s not like some therapist would know what it felt like. He never felt clean because the shadow of his past was constantly ebbing into his future. Because when he heard violin strings on the radio he couldn’t stop himself from triple tapping, over and over again, because there was no way he could risk losing someone else. Things had to be cut into eight or more, and if he couldn’t do that, it would have to be four. Better to redirect it to himself rather than the others.

Because there was dirt caked under his fingernails, even if he couldn’t see it. Sometimes when he spoke, water came out instead of words. But that was too difficult to say.

“Maybe it’s all the drugs, my body doesn’t really know what it’s doing,” he laughed, and lied, but it hurt less than telling the truth.

Between bullets and shouts, Klaus wasn’t sure he could ever hear himself think. He had lost track of which thoughts were his own and which were forced down his throat a long time ago, so it was easier for them to purge all of them.

“You’ve put a lot of work into getting clean, you should be proud of yourself.” 

Klaus wanted to tell her that he didn’t mean _that kind of clean_ but he knew she was already aware of that. They were just passing metaphors backwards and forwards.

He was constantly slipping further and further under the water, a bathtub slightly too small for him, water cascading over the sides against the cold tile floor. Everything was muted underwater. He didn’t have the strength to keep it muted forever. When he forced himself back through the surface, just as the voices reached their crescendo, he would take in lungfulls of air, body grasping on to who he was with a desire to live he was always unsure he still possessed. 

When he watched people, he missed seeing them through a veil of water. Things were too sharp these days, voices much too loud. Old memories were gaining new clarity, and Klaus had to remind himself that the darker parts weren’t just something his mind had conjured up. Ben was good at helping with that.

“It’s hard to be proud of myself when I’d be so much warmer at the bottom of a bottle. Have you ever been too drunk to see?” He laughed again, but there was no humour to it. Like the laughter of a person who had realised there was nothing they could do to stop something terrible happening. The irony stung a little.

Five taps.

Denise sighed again, barely audible. Missable to anyone who wasn’t used to having to pick it out. Her tone made him squirm. The way she watched him didn’t suggest that she was sizing him up, trying to figure out how useful he was, but Klaus could sense the scientific lines of thought behind the kindness. He wondered whether or not she could see the tension behind his. 

“There are other things we can try, Klaus-”

It was his turn to sigh, groaning as he let his head fall back against the chair, “I’ve tried it all before in rehab. Their bogus emotional group discussions, the meditation, the _bullshit._ There’s too much going on up here to be cured by some kind words.” He tapped the sides of his head as if to make a point.

“What makes you think you’re too far gone?”

The weak noise that Klaus made left his throat before he realised he was going to make it. A choking noise, like when air hits the back of your throat wrong. It was somewhere between a laugh and a choke.

He threw his arms up in the air as if to counterbalance the humiliation of being read, “Where do you want me to fucking start? When my birth mother sold me to a madman, or when my baby sister almost destroyed the world?”

There was meant to be defiance in his voice, snark and humour. Instead his voice was wet, weak and pathetic, like something was flooding. He pressed his hands against his temples, if only to stop them shaking. When he hadn’t been looking, she had found one of his loose threads and pulled until he was splitting at the seams, ready to spill his guts.

“Do you even know what it’s like? To see the world almost fall apart and have it all be your fault?” How many times had his world fallen apart now? Tears were hot, threatening and difficult to ignore, and his breaths were shuddering to match. “I’m past repair because everything I ever touch disintegrates in my fucking hands. The one person who ever loved me died in my arms and I never got to let him know what he meant to me-”

Klaus was anger and _fear,_ god, so much fear, and he couldn’t keep a hold of who he was under the stress and the panic. There’s a lot that Klaus couldn’t think about without feeling the delicate, fragile balance he had found for himself starting to crumble. _He had always been a cry baby, hadn’t he?_ The title had always hurt.

Feelings swell and flood Klaus’ body, and with trembling hands he tried desperately to scrape at them, to feel that passion before it was sucked out of him again and he was left empty. These processes came in waves, a tsunami smashing against the coast before being sucked out again and leaving him drained. Broken against the sea wall and gasping for breath.

When the tide came in, it came fast, a leaky faucet that had been turned on and had never learnt how to stop. It took Klaus a long time to calm down. It always did. He had never figured out how to let his emotions out one by one, so when the flood came, he became untouchable for a while. His therapist had learnt not to interrupt him by this point, just making the occasional gentle comment here and there. It didn’t help, but it stopped him getting up and running.

When he had calmed down enough to stand, legs shaking beneath him, but defiant enough to keep steady, he refused to meet the eyes of either of his silent witnesses. 

Words came slow, disjointed as he avoided the ‘you’re making good progress, even if it hurts’ conversation. Made plans for the following week. Ignored Ben’s concerned words as they left the office.

“Take care of yourself.” 

It was almost like she was mocking him.


	5. Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warnings for Five's Chapter: Unreality, violence mention, disassociation

“See if your phoney degree can tell me something I don’t already know. I’ve had forty years to figure myself out,” falsified apathy rolled off of Five’s words like venom, “I don’t need someone else to rebrand my own life story for me.”

\- 

He hated it. Every time it was time for his appointments he wanted to shout and run, but that would be revealing too much about who he was. From a young age he had figured out that the best way to survive is to hide all vulnerabilities away from sight. 

He had gotten good at exchanging pleasantries with the therapist, but it didn’t make her sessions any more tolerable. Ran through the questions like a broken record; _yes, no, if you insist, level stare, leave._

Five was a good liar. Better at pretending he had taken his tablets than Diego had ever been. Much better at convincing people that he was all calmness and annoyed smiles, hiding anything that dared to ripple up to the surface under the glamour of _business._ It was easy to pretend away that sneaking, familiar feeling of paranoia that always slipped back under his skin. The certainty that every move was being monitored was slipped underneath a blank face and pleasantries. 

But it was tiring. 

“You’ve been less engaged this week.”

A quirk of his eyebrow invited her to _enlighten him, he was all ears._

“Something has been bothering you.”

“Turning up to these sessions every week when I have better things to be doing is starting to bother me.”

The therapist watched him, face set, and Five mirrored her. He sensed both of them were tired of the evasive game they seemed to play every week. She would try to pry information from what little he would give her, and he would kick back against her attempts like a fox caught in a net.

“Do you want my opinion?”

 _No._ (Too much emotion in that) 

“Sure.” His face was set to ‘I don’t care’ to veil the discomfort.

“You’re scared that you haven’t managed to stop anything,” _(don’t)_ “that you’ve just pushed it back another week, another month-” _(stop it!)_ “-and you’re scared that you’ve let your siblings down again, that you can’t protect them.” 

_(Stop it, please stop it-)_

“Shut up.” The words slipped out before Five could clamp his mouth shut, and they hit the wall of apathy, shattering it, raining shards down on him. They cut him where they touched. His anger bit past his walls.

“Don’t pretend that you can have any idea what I’ve been through – what any of us have been through. You just fucking sit there and slap a label on us like it matters to you.”

His breathing was violent, fighting to tear away the thin sense of control he still had a hold on. 

A sharp, shuddering breath pushed him to speak again, and he hated his mouth for betraying him, “I’m not going to lose them again. I’m not sick for wanting to protect them.”

The therapist gave him nothing for his anger. A level, blank look.

The anger left as fast as it had come with nothing to fuel it, torn away from him until he was left digging his nails into his palms. He forced back the tears that stung at the corner of his eyes until the emotion was hidden inside again, where the therapist couldn’t pick anything apart from it. Even if he was angry and exhausted, he wouldn’t let her in.

Letting go of the anger felt like having his strings cut. Like every ounce of his energy had been dragged out of him until he was just a marionette with features.

Breathing levelled and hands unfurled to reveal small, bloody crescents before the therapist spoke again.

“It’s important to let your emotions out, Five,” if she realised that she had pushed him too far, she didn’t acknowledge it, “Give your thoughts a space to breathe. You’ve had a long time of being unable to talk to anyone about things.”

_A lifetime._

The anger had gone from Five’s system, and filled him back up again with the familiar hazy feeling of being only half-there. A shadow on the world, watching, but never really part of it. He was a ghost.

“You wouldn’t know the half of it.” There was no snark there, and he hated the fact he sounded so tired.

“When I close my eyes all I see is ash and blood,” he admitted, voice quiet. The openness took him by surprise, the voice of an old man, “I haven’t been a real person in a long time, but my siblings still have lives to live.”

He was trying to shove his emotions away again, like someone hastily throwing belongings into a suitcase because they had to _run._

Five wanted to run too.

The therapist was watching him. He had regained enough control to watch back, pushing any vulnerability back under a smug layer of confidence. It was agonisingly fake, but he wore the lie like a suit.

She was writing things down, and that sent a spark of worry through him. People only wrote things down when they needed to save the information to use against you at a later date. The Commission had taught him that much. You had to be careful how much of yourself you spoke out loud, because they’d find a crack in your armour and use it to tear you apart. Not that he’d had the privacy to hide anything from them; every moment of his life since he started had been monitored. He was more science experiment than human being at this point. A rat under the microscope.

A silence settled between them and it gave Five a chance to recompose himself.

“You have to recognise your own importance too, not just that of your siblings. There isn’t a specific duty that you have to adhere to. You’re still a person.”

Five laughed. It was bitter and humourless, more like a choke, “Maybe when this is all over I’ll consider working on that.”

What did he mean by _this?_ It was over, the apocalypse date had passed, his siblings were safe – ish, as much as he could make them - and the Handler was dead. There was nothing left to fight against. But his body had gotten so used to fighting that it didn’t know how to stop, it had never figured out how to turn off and accept that the door slamming down the road wasn’t a threat, or the people with their hands in their pockets weren’t searching for weapons. When everything _could_ be a fight, it was easier to keep yourself geared up for one, rather than to risk being taken by surprise. 

But he wasn’t sure he could do that any more. He was tired, old and tired, and he had been running on empty for so long he was sure the slightest hit would make him implode.

“The medication and the therapy should help you feel safer, Five. So you don’t feel so on edge.”

 _Shit,_ what had given it away? He quickly tried to look for any outward signs of unease; fingers picking at dried blood, tense shoulders, and moved to hide them better.

The therapist used his name a lot, more than what Five was comfortable with. He couldn’t really understand why. After all, what was in a name? He barely had one, and the Hargreeves name felt like a noose, tight around his neck. People like him and the Handler weren’t supposed to have names, because they weren’t really people, just tools to be used. The kind of people who slipped between the cracks. 

Only half real.

“I don’t feel on edge,” He lied. Like he lied about taking his medication, or lied about listening to the techniques she talked about in their sessions at first when he had clenched his jaw and refused to speak other than to pass a scathing comment. The lie kept easily, because it kept him hidden, “I’m just tired.”

That part was true. That was what you were supposed to do, wasn’t it? You were supposed to scatter in bits of the truth to make a lie more believable. Five wasn’t sure. He hadn’t been taught to lie, it was organically grown, nurtured by his father’s cruelty and neglect into a matter of survival. Their sickness had been the only thing Reginald Hargreeves had ever been able to love and nurture, because it was a sign that they still belonged to him.

“Is the medication not helping you sleep?”

They both knew he didn’t mean that kind of tired, but he elaborated anyway, if only to avoid talking about the medication, “Tired of putting up with all of this. Of conflict, I guess.”

He disliked the uncertainty in his voice.

She always looked disappointed when he came in with black eyes and blood under his fingernails, but he didn’t particularly care. By this point fighting was just a part of his blood. Blue and red under his skin that couldn’t be scratched or washed away. Like blood stains on the sleeves of a white shirt.

Even now he got into fights. He was used to being treated like a child (no matter how much he hated it) but it hadn’t taken him long to realise that some people didn’t care either way, a fight was a fight. And it benefitted some people. He looked like an easy target for a fight. Their mistake.

Not that Five wanted the violence to continue. He’d had enough, seen too much death and too much waste to watch it idle by any more. He had cut out his own humanity in the hopes to save the rest. But it was a sacrifice he had been waltzed towards for fifty years.

Now he just wanted to be clean. To scrub the rot and blood and sin from his arms and finally rest. But the problem with being only half a person is that he had much less than that to save.

Briefly, he considered telling his therapist all of this. Admitting that despite it all, he didn’t want any of it. A confession. But she wasn’t the one to care for his words, and he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of cracking him open and emptying out the pieces. He had to keep his structural damage internal.

So instead he folded his arms. Put on his best _‘well you know what this session has been great’_ face, stopped himself from shaking her hand out of general instinct.

“I think that’s our hour up.” His tone was casual, almost amicable, but mixed with a tone of finality. It hadn’t even been nearly an hour, but he was going. The therapist knew better than to argue with him on that one.

“Same time next week, Five. Remember to let me know if you think you need your dosage increased.”

Five thought about the pills he had been crushing under his feet and into the pavement as the days went by. The pretty lies he’d been using to cover up the ugly truth of paranoia and instability.

They couldn’t keep him in one place, and that suited Five just fine. If they couldn’t keep him in one place, then they couldn’t see him break. He could maintain the facade of control, picking and choosing his moments to allow himself to break. Sobs behind closed, locked doors, and self destruction hidden safely behind a blazer and a wall of self confidence. But admitting even that much to himself was impossible for Five, because it was a part of him now too. So long as the apocalypse wasn’t staring him down, he could pretend he remembered how to breathe. Chest moving but never quite remembering that he needed oxygen, too.


	6. Vanya

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warnings for Vanya's Chapter: Unreality, disassociation
> 
> This chapter was the most difficult to do! I took my best shot though. I figured she'd be very tired and different to the others.

“My dad always hated me. So did my siblings. Why can’t I bring myself to hate them back? Part of me thinks I’d still do anything for them, even now.” Vanya’s voice was a whisper against the chorus of sin. 

-

Vanya had been through this a thousand times before, and frankly, she was a little tired of it. But the cold anger that had swept her up before was gone, and now she just felt empty and useless again. That didn’t change the way that people looked at her. Like she was a monster. A freak. She never got to feel the love and the glory that her siblings did for being freaks, she just got anyone who knew the truth avoiding her eyes.

Now she had finally figured out how to stand on her own two feet, the world was quicksand beneath her.

If she wasn’t careful, the arms of her family would reach out from below the muddy sand and drag her down with her, forcing her to drown with them. The pressure on her lungs made her cough and fight to keep breathing. She wondered when the last time she could breathe easily was.

But she wasn’t drowning, and she wasn’t going to let them pull her under.

“You seem calmer this week.”

Vanya nodded and hummed something idle, like she was there but not quite in the room, watching her own therapy sessions happen from a distance.

“That’s a good sign of progress,” Denise smiled, and Vanya wondered why they always did that, and how much of it was real. Things had felt less real since she had allowed herself to be whole again.

A minute of silence settled between them before Vanya remembered how to speak in her own body again, “I’ve been practising the meditation you showed me. But my head still hurts, all the time.”

“You’ve not been sleeping again?”

Vanya let out a little laugh. She hadn’t been anything recently. 

“I’ve been trying to, but I feel…” _Guilty, scared, like I’ve found who I’m supposed to be and lost it all at once,_ she wanted to say. But it would be too difficult to explain, “I feel sort of like I’m stuck in a loop.”

Everything that had been black and white had suddenly smeared into hazy shades of grey, her perspective drawn out and blurred. Some days she hated herself (too many of those to count), and some days she hated her family more, but most of the time she just wanted every part of it to stop hurting. She couldn’t take the duality of her existence any more, trying to be _Number Seven,_ with nothing special or interesting about her screaming out against _Vanya,_ who she was supposed to be, powerful and _terrifying_ to the point where no one could ever hurt her again. But it had left her confused. Unsure. She couldn’t figure out who she was supposed to be any more.

“We could see about getting you something to help you sleep?”

“No.” 

Her voice had come out harsher than she meant it to, like a slap, but she couldn’t help herself. Gently she tried to recompose her voice, “My dad put me on so much medication, and I’m not going on it again.”

She laughed again, and the same bitter, toneless sound came out, “I won’t even take painkillers.”

Her therapist just watched her for a second, like she was deliberating over what to say to her. Vanya couldn’t blame her, she had seen tens of therapists by now, and she knew her case was even more complex now, but it didn’t make the looks any easier. Like they were trying to rationalise her behaviour, taking her apart layer by layer.

Part of her wanted to just collect in everything that she’d ever revealed about herself and take it back. She wanted to take her identity back, to take the wasted years back. To unwind herself from what Reginald had created. But she couldn’t run from her family. She’d tried.

Even now she wasn’t picking up the phone to Allison when she called. She couldn’t face that part of her, couldn’t face what she’d become. 

What scared her most is that at the time, the violence had felt good. For a split second, Vanya had been convinced that was what she had wanted. And then the feeling shattered. The feeling of euphoria and gleeful horror that had torn its way through her spine withered away and left her with devastation and terror in seconds. The same euphoria that had possessed her as she destroyed her family home, as she drained the life from her brothers. A person that was her, and not really her at the same time. Like watching a weird parody of herself waltzing across a stage.

“Maybe instead we can focus on some breathing techniques to try and help you calm down before sleep.”

Vanya fought the urge to roll her eyes. There was never anything new in these sessions. But rolling her eyes would be taking up too much space, so she smiled instead, “Sure, talk me through them.”

She wondered how long she had been doing that for, how long it took Reginald to stamp that obedience into her so deep that she couldn’t dare to put a foot out of line. Maybe he was right to. They had all seen what happened when she did try and make her own decisions for once. He had always said that holding her back was for her own good, and Vanya was half convinced that he was right all along.

A bubble of anger fought its way to the surface, and Vanya allowed it to wash over her for a minute before she pushed it back down again. The bubble reminded her that she was alive, and that Reginald had hurt her. It had taken a long time to nurture it from a scared step away from her upbringing to something genuine, and whilst the anger might not be ideal, it was her consistent life support for now. The one thing she could rely on. 

Breathing techniques were easy, and she talked herself through them like it was child’s play. She could bounce the ideas right back off of Denise, she knew what was expected of her. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Like a broken record. How much of her life had been stuck on repeat?

“I don’t think these sessions are really helping me, Denise.”

“We could try a different direction if you-”

“No, I mean, I think after everything I’ve just heard too much for it to work anymore. Before I felt numb and now that I can feel again I don’t want to be wasting my time in here.” 

That was it, wasn’t it? She had been controlled for so long that she couldn’t stand to sit here and listen to yet another therapist trying to tell her what she was and wasn’t allowed to feel. Maybe the intensity of her new emotions were tearing her apart from the seams, but that didn’t mean that she was going to give them away that easily.

“Vanya, this is to help you.”

“That’s what everyone always tells me,” Vanya said, and she could feel a new clarity in her voice, “The tablets were for my own good, being rejected was to help me. No one _ever_ stopped to ask whether or not I wanted to be helped. No one cared what my opinion on my own health was, it was always just whatever someone else wanted for me.”

The walls shook with her words, and that feeling of power slipped back into her skin again.

Denise had flinched back into her chair, and it gave Vanya a foreign sense of satisfaction, her own shadow taking control, “People were so scared of what I’d do if I got to make my own choices. And they gave themselves a reason to be scared, and-” 

_And what?_

Vanya’s voice cracked, “And now I’m scared instead.”

Her eyes seemed to focus themselves again, the lampshade swinging dangerously above her head. Denise tensed up and frozen, terrified. Vanya’s heart broke all over again.

“I’m – I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t mean to get angry,” the anger had melted from cold ice to hot, wet tears that were spilling over Vanya’s cheeks, “I didn’t mean to scare you I’m so sorry. Oh god, I’m a monster-”

“I don’t think you’re a monster, Vanya.” Denise’s voice was soft, her voice something strange against the screams inside Vanya’s head, “You’ve just been put in a horrible situation, that’s all. What we’re doing here is letting you take control of your own recovery, and letting you choose who you want to be.”

She offered a tissue from the box across the table, and Vanya reached for it blindly, burying her face in the soft paper. Vanya wished she could disappear into it, hide herself away so that she didn’t have to face anyone again, but she found the strength to try and fight against the tears that were pushing through the will to disappear. 

“I think you’re incredibly brave for standing up to your past,” she said, and for once Vanya thought she might have meant it, “We’re going to find a way that helps for you, and we can focus on helping you understand and control your past.”

The weight of being given the choice played on Vanya’s mind. Somewhere in the distance, the ghost of Reginald Hargreeves was trying to control her movements again, but she shrugged him off. The old man was dead. 

Vanya wasn’t sure she’d ever learn how to stop being a duality, but she could try.

A calm quiet settled over the room as Vanya’s tears finally retreated away. In through the nose, out through the mouth, remember that you’re _Vanya_ and no one can take that away from you any more. Pills of all shapes and sizes tumbling down a drain pipe. Nightmares about an ex with too-kind words crushed under her feet like flowers.

Once again, Vanya was floating. She wondered when her feet would hit the ground again.


End file.
